• Building on the largest opposition rally in years Monday, Russian protests spread to more cities on Tuesday as demonstrators denounced federal election results—resulting in hundreds of arrests.

• On Tuesday, thousands of young Yemenis in Sanaa continued their sit-in, despite President Saleh’s signed agreement that he would step down, declaring that their revolution is far from over. This followed demonstrations which erupted on Sunday, as residents of Taiz marched in protest of immunity provisions given to the outgoing President.

• Greenpeace activists infiltrated a French nuclear plant Monday and hung a banner on a reactor building in an attempt to expose nuclear national security weaknesses.

• Dozens of Occupy D.C. members were arrested late Sunday in an act of civil disobedience when they refused to dismantle a structure that they were building for shelter.

• Thousands protested at the UN Climate Conference in Durban, South Africa on Sunday, calling for a strong international plan to address climate change.

• Animal rights advocates in Taipei, Taiwan gathered by the hundreds on Sunday, condemning the conditions of animal shelters throughout the country.

• In India on Sunday, thousands marched and several began a hunger strike to show their support for the decommissioning of a damn in the interest of protecting local farmers.

• Kashmir witnessed protests and sit-ins on Saturday as residents of Srinagar decried the police’s use of pepper guns in breaking up demonstrations the day before.

• On Saturday, secular Tunisians held a counter-rally in front of Parliament, opposing a group of Islamists who were calling for female university students to wear a full-face veil.

• Thousands in India blocked train tracks Saturday, agitating for compensation to be given to victims of the industrial accident at Bhopal in 1984.

Samira Ibrahim

Women’s broad and persistent participation in the ongoing revolution in Egypt has brought a gruesome new tactic to light—virginity testing.  This form of repression that specifically targets female activists and journalists peaked around March 2011, and under Egypt’s post-Mubarak military leadership, the tactic is on the rise.

Recently, the courageous Samira Ibrahim, a 25-year-old Egyptian human rights activist, has not only publicly exposed the torture she and other women were subjected to, but she is filing a legal case against the Egyptian military for sexual assault. Human Rights Watch and other human rights advocacy and defense organizations have denounced the practice of virginity testing and are helping publicize Samira’s case, including a video testimony by Samira that details her experience.

Certainly, sexual torture is not new in Egypt, and men have been subject to it. Bloggers have helped expose this form of torture for years. In June 2011, the popular writer and lecturer, Mona Eltahawy, helped bring to light the new issue of virginity testing as part of a larger strategy targeting women to discourage them from participating in protest activities. She rightly declares, “If the ‘it wasn’t about gender’ mantra is stuck on repeat so that we don’t scare the boys away, then let them remember the state screwed them too…”

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• Protests were ongoing Sunday in Tahrir Square after thousands of protesters rallied on Friday for an end to the Army’s rule in Egypt.

• Despite strict controls on public speech, Singapore saw a rare public demonstration on Sunday as hundreds of activists participated in the global “Slut Walk” movement, calling attention to violence against women.

• Jordanian environmentalists staged a sit-in Saturday at the Prime Ministry, objecting to the country’s atomic program.

• Friday marked the seventh day of protests in Pakistan as demonstrators decried a NATO airstrike in Pakistani territory which killed 24 soldiers.

• On Wednesday, a mass rally took place in Bulgaria as thousands demonstrated against austerity measures, including a government plan to raise the retirement age.

• In India, several fired workers agitating for their union’s recognition were arrested Wednesday after protesting in front of a Hyundai plant’s gate.

• Millions of shop owners in India closed their doors on Thursday, striking and marching in protest of a bill which would allow foreign superstores like Walmart to have greater access in their country.

• In the United Kingdom, Wales was the center of one of the largest public sector strikes in a generation Wednesday as around 170,000 workers—including teachers—abandoned their posts in ongoing protests against government pension reforms.

• In the Philippines, hundreds of inmates continued a hunger strike Thursday, instigating noise barrages to agitate for faster case disposition, the release of political prisoners, and to address other grievances.

• Thousands of Greek workers participated in this year’s seventh general strike on Thursday, continuing their calls to end government austerity programs.

• Students from three high schools in Seattle staged a walk out on Thursday to gather at City Hall in protest of a Washington state proposal to fill budget holes with cuts to education funding.

• Building on a series of protests this month against Bank of America’s poor environmental record, a Thursday rally in Asheville, NC culminated in the arrest of several nonviolent resisters who wanted to call attention to BOA’s support of the coal industry.

Photo: Tanner Spendley.

Occupy Denver (OD) has been a tenacious occupation—and some say the angriest—fighting on despite external pressures and internal strains along the fault lines of oppression and privilege. The following is mostly about the latter, particularly the role and projects of women organizers, but the external pressures are great and not unrelated, so let me first say a few words about them.

The two greatest external threats to OD have no doubt been inclement weather and aggressive policing under the direction of the Democratic political establishment here—the first in the nation to forcibly uproot an Occupy encampment. Three weeks after OD’s emergence, John Hickenlooper, a pro-business Democratic governor, gave a press conference with Democratic Mayor Michael Hancock, declaring the encampment illegal. Days later, riot police carried out a middle-of-the-night raid, arresting dozens and removing some 80 tents from the encampment near the Capitol building. It would be the first of three forcible evictions.

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Last Friday marked the beginning of the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence Campaign. It is easy to be motivated by the idea of a 16 day dedication to combating violence against women, but I float between enthusiasm, doubt, and the occasional eye-roll as I read through some of the websites of major organizations that are promoting the campaign, like Say NO – UniTE, which is led by UN Women. I have to work a little bit to get past the cringe factor of what could appear as an elite-led advocacy campaign (ribbons, rubber bracelets, glossy pamphlets, etc.) to understand the significance of the campaign and its connection to the goal of a nonviolent world. Can anything led by the UN seriously be called activism?

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Leymah Gbowee, Liberian activist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

One of the most extraordinary nonviolent, transnational movements of the modern age was the women’s suffrage movement of the first two decades of the 20th century. New Zealand first extended the franchise in the late 19th century—after two decades of organizing efforts. As the new century began, women’s suffrage movements gained strength in China, Iran, Japan, Korea, the Philippines, Russia, Sri Lanka (then Ceylon), and Vietnam. Another 20 years and women were enfranchised in countries around the world, from Uruguay to Austria, the Netherlands to Turkey, and Germany to the United States. Few if any of those leading the campaigns for the ballot for women would have identified their approach as one of nonviolent action, nor would they have known its philosophical underpinnings or strategic wisdom. Like most who have turned to civil resistance, they did so because it was a direct method not reliant on representatives or agencies and a practical way to oppose an intolerable situation.

What exactly is the link between the rights of women, gender, nonviolent action, and building peace?

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Did I get your attention? While titles that draw attention to women’s physical features may summon most of the male population, a title like, Women, War and Peace was probably written off as a women-only television series. You know: “girl’s stuff” or women-as-victims drama.

Over the past month, the U.S. Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) aired a fascinating series that showed real women around the world in their roles as serious nonviolent organizers. The five-part film series, now completely available online, offers five cases of women’s activism in the following contexts (I have edited the website’s language with a nonviolent conflict perspective, bolding the significant political achievements of their efforts):

I Came to Testify is a story of how 16 Bosnian women who had been imprisoned and raped by Serb-led forces in the Bosnian town of Foca broke history’s great silence – and stepped forward to take the witness stand in an international court of law. Their courage resulted in a triumphant verdict that led to new international laws about sexual violence in war.

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On November 17, the Safe Chemicals Act of 2011 will come before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in a private hearing. It’s a bill that’s long overdue, as was its (rejected) precursor, the Safe Chemicals Act of 2010, also proposed by Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey. If enacted, the bill would drastically reform the country’s current chemical safety legislation—the Toxic Substances Control Act—which, as it stands, is more loophole than not: a system so inefficient that in its 35 years, fewer than 10 chemicals out of 82,000 have ever been restricted or banned.

As researchers continue to investigate the breadth of the harm linked to chemicals exposure—from infertility and obesity to learning disabilities and autism—a range of organizations and activist groups are creating a movement for reform. The Safe Chemicals, Healthy Families campaign (SCHF), a national alliance representing over 11 million individuals, includes organizations ranging from Agent Orange Legacy (children of Vietnam War veterans), to Black Women for Wellness, to Consumers Union. But some of the biggest players, the front-line activists from Maine to California and everywhere in between, are moms.

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A photograph on the front page of The Washington Post on October 27 showed Yemeni women burning their veils, a Bedouin tribal expression that appealed for assistance from tribesmen. With this action, the women appear to be saying that the official powers that ought to be safeguarding Yemeni women citizens instead are attacking them. The Associated Press photo, part of a gallery of shots of Yemeni women’s nonviolent actions, is visually stunning. While some onlookers might assume that the veil is a symbol of repression, to these Yemeni women it is part of their means of empowerment.

Yemen’s ongoing struggle is indicative of this year’s larger Arab Awakening in the way that women have assumed responsibility for speaking out politically.

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• At least 26 protesters were killed and more than 550 were injured, hundreds by gunshot, when security forces fired live bullets and tear gas at a massive demonstration in Yemen’s capital Sanaa on Sunday.

• At least 3,000 Moroccans demonstrated on Sunday calling for greater political freedoms, as the country’s pro-democracy movement attempted to regain momentum lost over the summer.

• Environmental activists gathered in Hartmann Park in east Houston Sunday to protest the Keystone XL pipeline, which they say will lead to more pollution in smog-filled Houston.

• About 50 women in Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim country, donned miniskirts to protest remarks by the Jakarta city governor who blamed a recent gang rape on the victim’s choice of clothing.

• In Poland, a mass anti-austerity protest called by unions took to the streets Saturday, as EU ministers cut short talks on the eurozone debt crisis a day after Washington told them to end their bickering.

• In a fresh indication of growing public anger over pollution, hundreds of demonstrators in the eastern Chinese province of Zhejiang on Sunday were camped outside a solar panel manufacturing plant that stands accused of contaminating a nearby river.

• Men, women and children from Somalia’s Saydika displaced camp took to the streets to protest the lack of basic necessities like proper shelter, food and water.

• Friday Prayer in northern Paris drew a small but angry protest against a ban on street prayer.